What my stolen motorbike taught me about English.

Hi, this is Jiro.

Recently my motorbike was stolen.

I had parked it in a parking lot and left to do some shopping. When I came back, it was gone. Only then did I remember that I had forgotten to lock it.

Of course I was upset. But the incident made me think about something interesting: how different languages describe unpleasant events.

In English you say simply:

My motorbike was stolen.

But in Japanese we usually say:
私はバイクを盗まれた。

This Japanese expression focuses on the person who suffers the experience. In a very literal sense, it is something like:

I suffered from my motorbike being stolen.

Another example is when a pet dies. In Japanese one might say:

私はペットに死なれた。

Again, the feeling is that the speaker was affected by the event.

Because of this difference, Japanese learners of English sometimes make sentences like these:

✗ I was stolen my motorbike.
✗ I was died my pet.

These sound strange in English because English usually focuses on the thing that happened, not on the experiencer.

So English prefers:

My motorbike was stolen.
My pet died.

Sometimes learners go too far the other way. Instead of saying:

I was robbed of my bag.

they say:

✗ My bag was robbed.

One way to understand this difference is to notice how the two languages often view events.

Japanese often describes events as something that becomes or happens naturally (～なる).

English more often describes them as something done by someone (～する).

For example:

English:
She will make a good wife.

Japanese thinking is closer to:
She will become a good wife.

So, strangely enough, my stolen motorbike gave me a small linguistic discovery. The same event can be described in two different ways—depending on whether you are looking at the world through English or through Japanese.